Southern Progress Corporation (SPC), a subsidiary of Time Inc., has launched an online portal, MyHomeIdeas.com, highlighting content from its shelter magazines and book line.
MyHomeIdeas.com features the Oxmoor House books, Cottage Living, Coastal Living, Southern Living, Southern Accents and Sunset magazine brands. The vertical portal, SPC’s second in the past year (after MyRecipes.com), focuses on homes, décor and gardening. Content is targeted mainly at women, 25-50 years of age, who are interested in “nesting” and decorating.
“We feel like SPC is already doing a great job in the print space, so this is the natural evolution,” said Jim Sexton, SVP and editorial director for SPC Digital. “So much of our audience is beginning to get their information online, we want to also be online. We want them to read the print magazines, but when they want to go deeper or broader we want them to go online.”
The launch of MyHomeIdeas.com follows a larger SPC strategy of establishing magazines as multi-media brands, rather than simply print or digital products. All five magazines involved in the new site will maintain their individual Web sites, and the sites and print products will cross-promote each other. Time Inc. titles such as Entertainment Weekly will also tout the new site, as will partner Web sites like MyRecipes.com and Time’s CNN.com.
Sexton said the company is finalizing plans for a large subscription and book sales push on the site. Online offers, which may include free subscriptions, will be contextualized for better targeting. For example, a person reading an article on cottages will be offered Cottage Living magazine.
The site also tackles SPC’s goal of growing digital ad revenue, offering integrated placements, pre-roll video, display and rich media. Advertisers supporting the launch include Benjamin Moore, Chrysler, Clorox and Lowe’s.
Aside from magazine content, MyHomeIdeas.com features original editorial, videos, polls and blogs. Original content will be updated weekly.
“We see magazines evolving into brands,” Sexton concluded. “Each of these titles you may think of as a magazine now, but in the future we see them as brands that live in many places — magazines, Web sites, books, TV shows — so they become brands that can live wherever the audience wants to interact with that kind of content.”
Birmingham, AL-based SPC publishes seven magazines in the shelter, health and cooking spaces, as well as the Oxmoor House books line. Parent company Time Inc. publishes 125 magazines overall.
